"The single most-challenged
sector of the market is the first-time home buyer," he said.
"Historically, they make up 40 percent of the existing home market. In the
last 18 months to two years, it has been 27 to 28 percent. Twelve percent of
the market has been missing. It's troubling."

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HomeServices is the second-largest
U.S. independent real estate brokerage, and part of a Berkshire unit that was
on Wednesday rechristened Berkshire Hathaway Energy.

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U.S. home resales in March fell to
a 1-1/2 year low, dropping to an annual rate of 4.59 million units according to
the National Association of Realtors.

[In our market there was a drop in
the number of sales for March this year compared to last year, 439 vs.
489. That's the lowest for March since 2009. For the first quarter
of 2014, the number of sales was 1090, just slightly lower than the first
quarter of the previous two years.]

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In the first quarter, Berkshire
reported a $24 million pre-tax loss from "real estate brokerage and
other" items within Berkshire Hathaway Energy, as spending rose on
employment and marketing. Revenue rose 21 percent to $405 million.

Some of that extra marketing was to
rebrand local brokerages as Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices. That puts the
Berkshire name on "For Sale" signs, and Peltier said it is helping
business.

"The brand is golden," he
said. "We have received an incredible number of comments from every market
we've launched in that the values associated with the Berkshire brand translate
into values that consumers look for: integrity, honesty, trust, value."

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As he sometimes does, Warren
Buffett likes to welcome the 40,000 visitors to the Berkshire Hathaway
annual meeting today with a last minute deal, this time a $2.8 billion
acquisition of an electric transmission company in Alberta, Canada, that will
further build out the holdings of Berkshire Hathaway Energy.